self-destroyed out of Beelzebub’s orchard, and all my brethren, live a life henceforth of true repentance.  Not out of the sins of your youth only, but out of the best, the most watchful, and the most blameless day you ever live, distil your half-pint of repentance every night before you sleep.  For, as dear old Skill said, unless you do, neither flesh nor blood of Christ, nor anything else, will do you any genuine good.

THE SHEPHERD BOY

   “He humbled Himself.”—­Paul.

“Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a boy feeding his father’s sheep.  The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a very fresh and well-favoured countenance, and as he sat by himself he sang.  Hark, said Mr. Greatheart, to what the shepherd boy saith.  So they hearkened and he said: 

      He that is down, needs fear no fall;
   He that is low no pride: 
   He that is humble, ever shall
   Have God to be his guide.

      I am content with what I have,
   Little be it or much: 
   And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
   Because thou savest such.

      Fulness to such a burden is
   That go on pilgrimage: 
   Here little, and hereafter bliss,
   Is best from age to age.

Then said their guide, Do you hear him?  I will dare say that this boy lives a merrier life and wears more of that herb called Heart’s-ease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet.”

Now, notwithstanding all that, nobody knew better than John Bunyan knew, that no shepherd boy that ever lived on the face of the earth ever sang that song; only one Boy ever sang that song, and He was not the son of a shepherd at all, but the son of a carpenter.  And, saying that leads me on to say this before I begin, that I look for a man of John Bunyan’s inventive and sanctified genius to arise some day, and armed also to boot with all our latest and best New Testament studies.  When that sorely-needed man so arises he will take us back to Nazareth where that carpenter’s Boy was brought up, and he will let us see Him with our own eyes being brought up.  He will lead us into Mary’s house on Sabbath days, and into Joseph’s workshop on week days, and he will show us the child Jesus, not so much learning His letters and then putting on His carpenter’s clothes, as learning obedience by the things that He every day suffered.  That choice author will show us our Lord, both before He had discovered Himself to be our Lord, as well as after He had made that great discovery, always clothing Himself with humility as with a garment; taking up His yoke of meekness and lowly-mindedness every day, and never for one moment laying it down.  When some writer with as holy an imagination as that of John Bunyan, and with as sweet an English style, and with a New Testament scholarship of the first order so arises, and so addresses himself to the inward